Alaungpaya
In 1752 the forces of the revived Mon kingdom of Hanthawaddy took Ava and ended the Toungoo dynasty. Aung Zeya, the headman of the village of Moksobo, later Shwebo, refused to submit, gathered followers, and proclaimed himself king as Alaungpaya, "embryo Buddha". Within eight years he had driven back the Mon, taken Pegu in 1757, founded the port of Rangoon, and reunited Burma. He died in 1760 returning from an invasion of Siam.
Expansion
His son Hsinbyushin (r. 1763–1776) took and destroyed Ayutthaya in 1767. At the same time he fought off four invasions by the Qing armies of China between 1765 and 1769, a series of victories that Burmese historians count among their greatest. Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819) conquered the kingdom of Arakan in 1784–85 and carried its sacred image, the Mahamuni Buddha, to his capital, where it remains. He built a new capital at Amarapura and began a vast stupa at Mingun that was never finished. Under him and his successor Bagyidaw, Burmese armies occupied Manipur and, after 1817, Assam, intervening in the Ahom kingdom's civil wars.
The court was also a centre of learning. In 1829 Bagyidaw appointed a committee of scholars to compile a new royal chronicle, the Hmannan Yazawin or Glass Palace Chronicle, named after the palace hall where they worked. It drew together earlier chronicles and inscriptions into an official history of Burma from its legendary beginnings and remains a basic source, used with caution, for the country's early history.
The wars with Britain
The advance into Assam and raids into British Bengal led to the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824–26, a costly war for both sides. By the treaty of Yandabo in 1826 Burma ceded Arakan and Tenasserim and gave up its claims to Assam and Manipur, and paid an indemnity. In 1852 the British took Lower Burma, with Rangoon and Pegu, in a second war.
King Mindon (r. 1853–1878) tried to modernise what remained of the kingdom. He built a new capital at Mandalay in 1857, sent missions to Europe, introduced a salaried administration and coinage, and convened a Buddhist council in 1871 that had the whole Pali canon inscribed on 729 marble slabs at the Kuthodaw pagoda.
The fall
His son Thibaw came to the throne in 1878 after a palace massacre of rival princes. Disputes over a British timber company and fears of French influence led to a British ultimatum. In November 1885 a British force advanced up the Irrawaddy and took Mandalay with little fighting. Thibaw was sent into exile at Ratnagiri in India, where he died in 1916, and Burma was annexed to British India in 1886. Resistance in the countryside continued for years.
Further reading
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Gombrich, Richard F. Theravada Buddhism: A Social History. Routledge, 2006
- Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
See also
- Ahom dynasty — The Ahom dynasty was a Tai-descended royal line that ruled the Brahmaputra valley of Assam from 1228 to 1826, notable for resisting Mughal conquest and for the historical chronicles, the Buranjis, its administration produced.
- Buddhism — Buddhism is a religious and philosophical tradition founded in northern India in the 5th century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, centred on the Four Noble Truths and a path to liberation from suffering.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.